I- 



AN 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED 15EF0RE 



THE SOCIETY OF ALUMNI 



UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, 



.njLY 1, 1869, 



By WM. C. rives, Jr 



"Multa dies, variique labor mutabilis asvi 
Retulit in melius;' multos alterna revisens 
Lusic et in solido rursus fortuna locavit." — Virgil. 



PUBLISHED BY ORI>ER OF THE SOCIETY. 



RICHMOND: 

GARY, CLEMMITT & JONES, PRINTERS. 

1869. 



f 



%' 



AN 



i^D DRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE 



THE SOCIETY OF ALUMNI 



OF THE 

UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, 

JULY 1, 1869, 

, AN 
By WM. C. rives, Jr. 

" Multa die^5 variique labor mutabilis aevi 
Retulit in'meliiis; multos alterna revisens 
Lusit et in solido rursus fortuna locavit. — Virgil. 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SOCIETY. 



RICHMOND: 

GARY, CLEMMITT & JONES, PRINTERS. 

1869. 



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ADDRESS. 



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Mr. President and Gentlemen 



1^ In choosing me as your representative 

■^ on this occasion, you have taken no thought of my 
^;^> inexperience in the performance of such duty as 
\^ you have assigned me. You have looked only to 
r my connection with one whose death, a short time 
'^ before your last anniversary, called forth many 
expressions of sorrow. Him you recalled, as 
perhaps you had often heard him in other days, in 
the act of counselling and animating the people of 
Virginia in their primary assemblies. Him you 
remembered by a long career of service, in State 
or National Legislature, or as the representative 
of his country in a foreign land, or by the conse- 
cration of his declining years to the task of pre- 
paring an adequate memorial of the labours of 
one of the greatest of the organizers and early 
administrators of the government. It may be 
that, by a nearer association, his form seemed to 
you to resume a once familiar place among the 
guardians of this Institution, or these walls to send 
back to you the accents of his discourse before your 



Society.* These remembrances, these associations, 
have led you to devolve this duty on me — the 
inheritor of his name — and unwilling to seem 
insensible to an act of kindness that long absence 
and remoteness and habitual silence on my part, 
render the more generous on yours, I bring you, 
in grateful acknowledgment, the tribute of my 
voice. 

The welfare of this University and of your So- 
ciety, and indeed of Science, Literature and Edu- 
cation in this Commonwealth are so inextricably 
interwoven with the welfare of the State, and the 
condition of the State has been so strangely altered, 
that no subject seems to me more worthy to engage 
your thought, and more appropriate to the occasion, 
than the relation of recent changes to the interests 
and the, duties of the joeople of Virginia. 

The theme, I am aware, is obvious and familiar, 
but a poet of consummate genius tells us — 

" To know 
That which before us lies in daily life 
Is the prime wisdom." 

I am aware, also, that a topic so easily brought 
within the sphere of party politics, though by no 
means necessarily belonging to it, should' be treated 
with reserve, especially on a day dedicated to a re- 
newal of the pleasing associations of academic life; 
and knowing this, it shall be my aim to give no 

*See " Discourse on the uses and importance of History" delivered by 
Hon. Wm. C. Rives before the Society of Alumni of the University of 
Virginia. 



cause of offence to any political convictions, while, 
at the same time, I shall endeavour to follow the 
light of that cheerful and hopeful philosophy which 
betits the occasion, and without whose guidance it 
will be impossible to surmount the sorrows of the 
past and overcome the trials of the future. 

Nor, gentlemen, can a consideration of the in- 
terests of Virginia be a matter of indifference to 
you, from whatever region of this wide empire you 
may come. Depressed as the fortunes of Virginia 
are, her influence is yet felt not only in adjoining 
States, but in the central seat of American Com- 
merce; on the Mississippi, on the Gulf, on the far 
off Pacific shore. Her power, though reduced, is 
yet co-extensive with the limits of the Republic ; 
for many hearts, in every part of the Republic, are 
bound to her by the ties of ancestry and memory, 
and still beat with emotion at the mention of her 
name. 

On the threshold of this enquiry, a recent change 
renders necessary a definition of the term Virginia 
once employed to comprehend a domain stretching 
from ocean to ocean, and though subsequently re- 
stricted, continuing to embrace a vast territory won 
by the enterprise and valour of the sons of Vir- 
ginia, until that territory was surrendered as a 
Avilling gift to freedom and to union. For the pur- 
poses of to-day, let there be no farther cession. 
Let there be no East and no West Virginia. 
Whether there shall be political re-union or not 



between these regions, all antagonism between 
them is forever at an end. Every clay is strength- 
ening the bonds of mutual interest which unite 
them, and bringing them into more intimate and 
friendly communion. The Alleghanies and the 
Blue Ridge have ceased to exist as barriers between 
them. The distant banks of tide water shall echo 
this evening to the same shrill whistle — to the same 
thundering wheels — which roused the deer this 
morning from his dewy couch among the western 
mountains. By Virginia, then, let us designate 
not Virginia as limited by an unfamiliar boundary, 
not Virginia as shorn of one-third of her territory 
and her population, but Virginia in the integrity of 
1860, bathed on the north and east by the waters 
of the Potomac, the Chesapeake, the Atlantic, 
bounded on the west by the Cumberland mountains 
and the sinuous Ohio, resting her broad base on the 
States of North Carolina and Tennessee, and shoot- 
ing upward in towering pinnacle to the latitude of 
the city of INTew York. 

The change in the condition of Virginia that 
most occupies public attention is the change in her 
political relations ; but this change, in accordance 
with my pledged reserve, I shall notice only with 
a few general reflections in which I believe all 
men who have at heart the welfare of Virginia 
will concur. 

The re-organization of Legislative, Executive and 
Judicial authority by a fair expression of the will 



of the people, is an object so essential to the inte- 
rests of Virginia, that all who wish for the diffu- 
sion of general prosperity will rejoice to see its 
consummation. It is an end of far greater impor- 
tance than complete admission to Federal repre- 
sentation. Desirable as that privilege is, the re- 
fusal of it up to this time has been attended with 
the compensating advantage of turning much of 
the talent of Virginia from its former devotion to 
Federal politics to the more useful field of home 
pursuits. Much as the still unsettled political con- 
dition is to be regretted, it should not be forgotten 
that the condition is transient, and that whether 
the tendency of the country at large be to a con- 
solidated democracy or to a qualified recognition 
of the so called rights of the States, Virginia 
will soon be remitted to the same measure of po- 
litical privilege which shall be enjoyed by the 
most favored of her sister States. Until that time 
come, let the thought and employment of her j^eo- 
ple continue exclusively at home. In her isolation 
and retirement, Virginia shall not be forgotten, 
and her image, like the unseen images of the Ro- 
man patriots, shall be the more lustrous because 
withdrawn from observation.* 

Another important change occurring as a conse- 
quence of the war, is the change affecting the pro- 
perty of the inhabitants of the State. It is but 
four years since the scene which offered itself to 

* "jGo ipso prcefulgebant quod imagines eorum non visebantur." 



8 

the traveller through Virginia was such as to cause 
the most hopeful spirit to sink under a weight of 
discouragement and despondency. On the other 
side of your mountains, fences, barns, mills, dwel- 
lings had been burned. Bridges had been de- 
stroyed and highways rendered impassable. 'No 
fields held out the promise of abundance. No cattle 
grazed upon a thousand hills. Your valley, — the 
garden of America by the decree of Providence, — 
had been made a desert by the decree of man. 
On this side, the same picture presented itself with 
added and j)eculiar features of desolation. From 
the railways built to bear to the markets of the 
world the fruits of industry, the iron had been 
torn, and lay by the side of its former bed, warped 
and twisted by fire. The river which welcomed to 
its bosom the first colonists of the country, forced 
its way to the sea over driven piles and shattered 
wrecks, while the deadly odours of recent combat 
still mingled with the breath of spring. The 
neighbouring heights were crowned with forts, and 
far over the hills might be traced the winding lines 
of intrenchment. Broad levels of fertile land, 
stretching from the river, were overgrown with 
weeds, and the abodes of open handed and grace- 
ful hospitality, if not destroyed, afibrded a melan- 
choly refuge to a sick soldiery or a race just freed 
from bondage. At the head of the navigation of 
the river, your capitol had been swept by a disas- 
trous conflagration. Your other towns lay shat- 



tered and half ruined, and one, still " black from 
the miner's blast," had just heard the last note of 
expiring war. These visible marks of desolation 
gave an inadequate idea of the loss sustained. 
That large mass of what was once property, repre- 
sented by the stock of incorporated companies, and 
by confederate, state, county, municipal and indivi- 
dual obligations, was involved in the general ruin 
of a lost cause. 

And yet overwhelming as these varied losses 
seemed when they were first contemplated, they 
have been attended with but few instances of that 
suffering for the necessaries of life which is -com- 
mon, and ever must prevail, in the crowded and, 
as they are generally esteemed, prosperous centres 
of population. Occasioning, as they still do, much 
of perplexity and inconvenience, their sum bears 
but a small proportion to the wealth of the State 
which was not destroyed, and a thoughtful survey 
of this apparent field of utter ruin will bring the 
conviction that as out of the " nettle danger" may 
be plucked "the flower safety," so from the impov- 
erishment of the Commonwealth, may soon be de- 
veloped the fruit of a hitherto unknown prosperity. 
Great as were the interests destroyed by war, the 
chief wealth of Virginia continued to exist after 
the war, in the productive energies of her wide 
fields and her surviving population. A fertile soil 
under a benign sky, remained unconfiscated, and 
was ready to bless with bountiful return the efforts 



10 

of all who were willing and able to labour. The 
poverty, though general, was not extreme or abject, 
and property enough was left to foster the spirit of 
economy, to encourage exertion, to stimulate the 
sentiment of self-reliance. N'ecessity brought, and 
still brings much land into the market, but enough 
and more than enough remained and will remain 
to the native inhabitant to be made more produc- 
tive, with careful culture, than the whole of the 
original possession. The subdivision of an estate, 
without impairing the resources of the owner, will 
thus add to the wealth of the State. 

The most serious loss of wealth to Virginia was 
the loss of so much of the flower of her youth and 
of her vigorous manhood. But this loss, too, shall 
soon be repaired by the natural growth of the 
population already within the State and by acces- 
sions from without; and in the contemplation of its 
moral aspect, consoling thoughts shall not refuse to 
assuage the bitterness of sorrow with which the fate 
of the fallen sons of Virginia has been regarded. 
They have perished indeed in a vain attempt. The 
cause they fought for has been lost. I have nothing 
to say of its merits or its demerits. Such discus- 
sion, fruitless everywhere, would especially contra- 
vene the purposes for which we meet. But there is 
a justice — there is a tribute to the dead — which their 
generous adversaries will not withhold. Exposed 
as they were on the frontier, in an especial manner, 
to the obvious calamities of war, there was much 



11 

to commend to them the policy of a halting neu- 
trality ; but they chose, in the hour of trial, not to 
study the philosophy of success, not to count the 
cost, not to listen to the voice of what they thought 
" a reptile prudence." They have laid down their 
lives as the penalty of their decision. No monu- 
ments of bronze or marble shall be lifted to the 
skies to display to posterity, with the emblems of 
mortality, the record of their achievements. They 
shall sleep in scattered, and it may be in unmarked 
graves, but they shall not sleep a prey to forgetful- 
ness. The rivers of Virginia, in ceaseless flow, 
shall murmur their requiem, her everlasting hills 
shall awake the remembrance of their unselfish- 
ness, their valour, their devotion, and History shall 
write as their epitaph, not on tables of stone, but 
on the minds and hearts of generations yet unborn, 
that they were true to their convictions, their aifec- 
tions, and their God. 

In the discussion of losses of property, the great 
change affecting the condition of the negro popular 
tion of the State, is often referred to. This change 
is so peculiar in its character that it deserves to be 
considered briefly in some of its relations to the 
past as well as to the future. A chapter in the 
history of opinion and action relating to the Afi'i- 
can slave trade and the system of African slavery, 
has not received that general attention which it 
merits. It is easy to recall its leading facts. The 
first cargo of African slaves was brought to this, 



12 

at that time infant, colony in the year 1620. The 
traffic soon began to excite the avarice of Euro- 
pean merchants, and the commercial interest of the 
towns of Liverpool and Bristol was early and 
eager to share its profit. 'No sense of its iniquity 
seems to have been aroused in England until it 
had flourished for more than one hundred and fifty 
years. The British government was so insensible 
of its immorality that in 1748, in a negotiation with 
Spain, it pressed successfully the recognition of a 
right to the exclusive privilege of supplying the 
Spanish colonies of America with slaves. It was 
not until near the close of the 18th century, that 
the sentiment of reprobation began to be aroused 
through the exertions of Clarkson, Wilberforce 
and others ; and even then, so powerfully was the 
influence of the Liverpool and Bristol interest and 
of the Royal family exerted in opposition to any 
interference, that the zeal and eloquence of Wilber- 
force, though reinforced by the great arguments and 
authority of the premier — William Pitt — failed to 
carry measures of immediate suppression through 
parliament. Not until the first of January, 1808 — 
several years after Pitt's death — did an act of par- 
liament go into efl^ect forbidding British subjects 
from engaging in the traffic. 

A few years after the recognition of the Indepen- 
dence of the United States, the question of the 
slave trade was taken up in the Convention which 
formed the American Federal Constitution. The 



13 

year 1800 and the year 1808 were respectively pro- 
posed in that body as limitations of the term after 
which the importation of slaves into the country 
should be prohibited. The extension to the year 
1808 was earnestly opposed by James Madison, of 
Virginia, and the debate which took place at this 
time was the occasion on which George Mason of 
Virginia denounced not only the traffic but the 
system of slavery, with the fiery eloquence that be- 
longed to him. The representatives of Virginia, 
however, were overruled, and although the vote of 
Virginia was recorded against the extension, the 
year 1808 was fixed on instead of the earlier year 
proposed for the cessation of the trade. 

If we trace the opinion and the action of Vir- 
ginia, we shall find both far in advance of the 
opinion and the action of Great Britain and of the 
United States in regard to this question. 

We shall find her people and her representative 
men speaking and acting upon it in terms not to be 
misunderstood. In 1774, the people in their pri- 
mary assemblies in many counties of Virginia, ex- 
press their opposition to the importation of slaves 
in language of indignant remonstrance. At the 
meeting called for this purpose in the county of 
Fairfax, George Washington presides. During the 
same year a Convention is held at Williamsburg in 
the month of August, and a resolution is adopted 
protesting against importation and pledging the 
members of the Convention to abstain from the 



14 

purchase of imported slaves. In a letter from the 
Father of this Institution to the same body, we 
observe that he anticipates his memorable protest 
in the original draft of the declaration of indepen- 
dence, denounces, in language of burning eloquence, 
the exercise of the royal prerogative to annul the 
repeated attempts of the colony of Virginia to pro- 
hibit the introduction of slaves, and affirms it as 
the most earnest object of desire on the part of the 
people to rid themselves forever of the system of 
slavery. In the general Congress held at Phila- 
delphia in the autumn of the same year, we find 
the same sentiments expressed, and to ^articles of 
agreement binding the members to an immediate, 
complete and perpetual discontinuance of the slave 
trade and to all intercourse of business with those 
concerned in it, we witness the signatures, on the 
part of Virginia, of Peyton Randolph, President 
of the Convention, of Richard Henry Lee, Patrick 
Henry, Jr., Benjamin Harrison, George Washing- 
ton, Richard Bland and Edmund Pendleton. As 
a further evidence of the early sentiment of Vir- 
ginia, it may be mentioned that her Legislature 
found time in the year 1777, amid the excitement 
and trial of the Revolutionary war, to pass an act 
prohibiting the traffic. Proof of the earnest wish 
of all the great representative men of Virginia of 
the Revolutionary era not only to limit but to ex- 
tirpate slavery, might be expanded into volumes. 
In the language of a high authority, they listened 



15 

with attention and respect to all the schemes for 
the purposb that wisdom or ingenuity could de- 
vise.* 

But the problem was too difficult for their great 
powers, and they passed from the stage of human 
action leaving its solution to their descendants. 

We may still see among us the venerable form 
of a man bound no less by the ties of familiar and 
confidential intercourse than by the ties of blood to 
the Father of this Institution, and still learn from 
his lips how deeply he was imbued with the opin- 
ions of his great ancestor in relation to this subject, 
and how earnestly he strove in early manhood, — 
and with what zealous co-operation on the part of 
Virginian associates of whom some are yet among 
the living, — to give those opinions effect by the 
measure of gradual emancipation.-}- But he failed 
in 1833 in an undertaking more arduous than that 
which had baffled the men of the Revolutionary 
era, because the increase of the slave population 
and the rising storm of political excitement added 
circumstances of greater difficulty. 

It is foreign to my purpose, as it would be in- 
appropriate to the occasion, to trace further the 
histor}^ of opinion and action in relation to this 
question; but it may safely be affirmed that the 
sentiments of the early patriots of Virginia on this 
subject, continued to be entertained by many of 
the Virginians who in the late war struck the 

* Hon. B. W. Leigh. f Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Esq. 



16 

fiercest blows against Federal authority. It is 
common to ascribe the resistance to ilational au- 
thority which burst forth on the soil of Virginia 
to the inspiration of. slavery; but to seek an expla- 
nation of the fact in that source, is to overlook a 
sentiment which, whether right or wrong, has ever 
exerted and will ever continue to exert a control- 
ling influence over the human heart. Whatever 
may be the just claims and influence of a compre- 
hensive patriotism, love of country is not a senti- 
ment that is communicated to every breast from a 
remote boundary and reaches last of all the narrow 
concerns of State, of county, of parish, of neigh- 
borhood, of family. "To be attached to the sub- 
division," says Edmund Burke, "to love the little 
platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle 
(the germ as it were) of public afi'ections. It is 
the first link in the series by which we proceed 
towards a love to our country and to mankind." 

I do not propose to consider whether the prin- 
ciple laid down by the orator-philosopher of Eng- 
land be a principle which ought to guide human 
action or not, but it will explain the motive of 
resistance, and an illustration of its operation may 
be found in an incident marking the first step in 
the military career of a man than whom has existed 
no fitter embodiment of the spirit of Virginia at 
the outbreak of the late war. "What flag are we 
going to fight under — the Palmetto or what?" said 
a friend to Ashby, as the latter was about to draw 



17 

his sword. "Here," replied Ashby, raising his 
hat and taking from it the flag of Virginia newly 
painted by his own order and for his own purpose, 
"Here is the flag, /intend to fight under!" In- 
genuity might seek to establish some connection 
between the spirit of the answer and a sympathy 
with slavery ; but a natural and just interpretation 
will see in it nothing but a conformity to the prin- 
ciple which Burke lays down, and trace to that 
source the inspiration which created the splendid 
incarnation of chivalry who ceased to electrify the 
whole country by his "admirable skill and auda- 
city"* only when his heroic form was borne in a 
bloody shroud to your chapel, and thence consigned 
to rest in your cemetery. 

Turn we now to the result arrived at after the 
lapse of nearly two hundred and fifty years from 
the time when the system of African slavery was 
first established on the soil of Virginia. 

It is not for any man nor for any set of men to 
claim credit for the fulfilment of abolition. That 
object was professedly not the aim of one to whom 
the result is sometimes attributed. All men and 
all parties worked together for its consummation- 
many of them indeed unconsciously— as drops of 
water contribute to fill the rivers and rivers to 
swell the ocean. It is enough to know that the 

* These words are the more significant from the fact that they were ap- 
plied to Gea. Ashby by Major Gen. John C. Fremont U. S. A. in an official 
despatch informing the U. S. government of the progress of his campaign 
against Jackson's corps. 

3 



18 

result has been reached at the cost of fearful suffer- 
ing. It is enough to know that slavery no longer 
exists as an impenetrable wall to throw the shadow 
of a ruinous responsibility and of an exclusive 
odium on the sons of Virginia, and to repel the 
regard, esteem and interest of the nations foremost 
in progress and civilization. Well may Virginia, — 
the greatest of all sufferers by the existence of sla- 
very, and the greatest of all gainers by its extinc- 
tion, — as she contemplates the destruction of this 
barrier, originally erected not by herself but by 
others, in spite of her remonstrance and entreaty, 
look beyond the difficulties of the present moment 
to the dawning of a brighter day ! Well may Vir- 
ginia, as she thoughtfully surveys the unspeakable 
advantages that liberation will bring to her and 
more conspicuously reveal with each succeeding 
year to the end of time, thank God and take cour- 
age ! 

But it is not to be forgotten in the midst of this 
well founded rejoicing, that the abolition of slavery 
does not abolish the negro. The two races — white 
and black — are still side by side on the soil of Vir- 
ginia, and each is charged with a duty to itself and 
a duty to its neighbour. The negro is to learn that 
freedom does not mean freedom from labour, — free- 
dom from the constraining influence of temperance 
and other virtues. Liberty holds out to him higher 
rewards than have heretofore been within his reach, 
— the rewards of property, of education, of an im- 



19 

proved intellectual and moral condition ; but she 
threatens him at the same time with a deeper 
abyss of degradation than any from which he has 
emerged, with a more pinching poverty, a more 
unutterable misery, a more loathsome death. His 
destiny formerly committed by a fearful responsi- 
bility to other hands, is now transferred to his own. 
It is involved in an obscurity which no human eye 
can penetrate. As he can receive no reinforce- 
ment from immigration, and must suffer from un- 
favorable circumstances attending his condition, it 
is easy to see that his relative if not his absolute 
numbers on the soil of Virginia, must rapidly 
diminish. His tendency is to occupy the warmer 
regions of the earth, whose climate is better suited 
to his nature and whose products more easily re- 
ward his toil. It may be that he shall find his 
way back to the land whence he was torn, and that 
Providence, overruling the ancient outrage of man 
for its own beneficent purpose, shall place in his 
hands the torch that is to illumine the hitherto 
impenetrable recesses of pagan darkness. What- 
ever the future of the negro, the white man should 
never forget his claims to a forbearing and gene- 
rous treatment; the resistance of his kindly na- 
ture to insurrectionary appeal ; the sudden with- 
drawal of the hand that long supplied him, without 
thought on his part, with shelter and food, with 
clothing and medicine; his immediate exposure, 
without property, without education, without pre- 



20 

paration of any kind, to the hardships and perils 
of the battle of life. It is not only unworthy of 
the race destined to rapid growth under favorable 
circumstances, to cherish a feeling of jealousy and 
antagonism towards the negro, but it is the duty 
of that race, — superior as it is in native endow- 
ment and in all the accidents of fortune, — to reach 
out to the weakness of its associate, the hand of 
friendly and charitable support. 

In the destruction of slavery, the only barrier 
of a permanent nature to the movement of immi- 
gration hither, has been removed. The tide has 
not set in with expected quickness and force, but 
the delay in its progress is easily explained by 
transient causes. The undetermined political con- 
dition of the State, and not a little misrepresen- 
tation in regard to the disposition of its inhabi- 
tants, partly from delusion and partly from male- 
volence, have operated in a considerable degree 
to frighten away capital and its essential asso- 
ciate immigration. Another explanation may be 
found in the fact that the stream of foreign im- 
migration has long been accustomed to flow to the 
homogeneous reservoir which it finds in the cities 
of the West, whence it is distributed over the wide 
area of neighbouring states and territories. Pow- 
erful combinations of capital, operating through 
numerous and active and long- established agencies, 
still keep the current in its ancient channel. 

But no adverse influences can long prevail over 



21 

the position and the advantages of Virginia. She 
is on the very margin of states already filled with 
overflowing population, and that population will 
not long continue to seek what is remote, when na- 
ture offers superior advantages in what is near. 
She offers to the immigrant farmer for widely varied 
culture, vast tracts of virgin soil or tracts suscepti- 
ble of quick and easy and inexpensive renovation. 
She offers to the builder boundless forests of pine 
and oak and fir for the purposes of naval or land 
construction. She offers to the miner inexhaustible 
supplies of iron and coal and oil and salt, of copper 
and lead and zinc and other materials of his indus- 
try, — and these supplies not difficult of transporta- 
tion to the markets of the world, but on the edge of 
highways already established by nature or by art. 
She offers to the manufacturer her countless wa- 
terfalls and swift descending streams, and to the 
merchant and the mariner her safe and capacious 
harbours and her far penetrating navigable bays and 
rivers. To all she offers a climate, neither enerva- 
ting by the extreme of heat nor benumbing by ex- 
cess of cold, but suited in temperate mildness to 
the highest development of the interdependent phy- 
sical, intellectual and moral qualities of man. If 
a small portion of her domain be subject to malaria, 
drainage and culture place a remedy within human 
control ; and if human energy fail, Providence, in 
its bounty, has caused the refreshing breezes of the 
ocean on the one side to fan the brow of sickness, 



while on the other, it has struck the mountains 
with a mysterious wand and compelled them to 
pour forth waters in exhaustless streams and never 
changing properties, to heal all manner of disease. 
To the advantages of nature, she adds the advan- 
tages of social order, the means of educaion, the 
opportunities of public worship. 

A few years will bring about mighty changes 
within your borders. The subdivided soil shall 
double its increase; the forest that to-day waves its 
gigantic arms in primeval solitude shall bow be- 
neath the axeman's stroke ; the mineral wealth that 
has been buried under mountains since the creation, 
shall be brought forth from its secret caverns and 
made subservient to the use of man. The waters 
shall no longer leap from rock to rock in idle play 
and roll their unused power to the sea. Your har- . 
hours rivers and bays shall no longer be unfre- 
quented, but shall be whitened with unnumbered 
sail and resound to the pulsations of all conquering 
steam. 

In the midst of this busy scene, will be found an 
element of the general society whose influence has 
not yet been considered. 

Will the white population born and reared on 
the soil, still its principal owner, stimulated to 
exertion by the strongest motives that appeal to 
human energy, bound to the State by the memory 
of kindred and ancestral graves, and every tender 
and endearing association that can move the heart 



23 

of man, — will this population be submerged by the 
immigrant tide? Has it no distinctive part to act, 
no special duties to perform ? Will it lose all its 
ancient characteristics ? 

An historian, himself a native of the colony of 
Virginia, writing more than one hundred and sixty 
years ago, in no unkind or censorious spirit re- 
proached his countrymen with depending "alto- 
gether upon the liberality of nature without en- 
deavoring to improve its gifts by art or industry," 
and declared that "they spunge upon the bless- 
ings of a warm sun and a fruitful soil and almost 
grudge the pains of gathering in the bounties of 
the earth." The testimony of Beverly, as well as 
the relative slowness of Virginia's progress in 
wealth and population, contributed extensively to 
mould opinion in regard to the white inhabitants 
of the State. 

An impression prevailed among the supporters 
of Federal authority before the late war, that any 
resistance on the part of these inhabitants would 
be quickly disposed of, and their conservatism pro- 
duced an unfavorable estimate of their energy in 
the minds of their more hasty and impetuous 
southern brethren. 

Disparagement not unfrequently found expres- 
sion in the imputation to the Virginian of a will- 
ingness to rely on blood and ancestral fame rather 
than any merit of his own. The part of Virginia 
in the Revolutionary war of '76, in the war with 



24 

Great Britain in 1812, in the war with a neighbor- 
ing republic in 1846, — the labours and achieve- 
ments of her soldiers and her statesmen in every 
crisis of the country's history, whether of war or 
peace, could not wholly be forgotten ; but the 
stream of time had swept the great actions of the 
sons of Virginia, beyond the reach of general and 
habitual remembrance. 

None realized, — not even the people of Virginia 
themselves, — the energy that lay dormant within 
the limits of the Commonwealth, until a position of 
neutrality in the late war became impossible. Ex- 
cluding all consideration of causes and objects, and 
looking merely at the admirable and surprising- 
display of effort by every State engaged in the con- 
flict on either side, it will not be considered, in any 
place or by any party, exaggeration to ascribe to 
Virginia the highest manifestations and the most 
conspicuous type of energy that were exhibited 
during the progress of the war. I shall not dwell 
on details and need only refer you, in brief illus- 
tration, to one moment and to one man, — but him 
a man who cannot be dissociated from the follow- 
ers into whom he poured and from whom he drew 
the ardour of his soul. Recall the moment when 
millions of expectant eyes were turned to see the 
beleaguered capital fall before the armies and the 
combinations of the Federal commander, and 
when, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky in an 
unobserved region of the heavens, there fell a 



25 

blow, from an unseen and at that time an almost 
unknown hand, to disturb and set back for years 
the fulfilment of the national programme. For a 
higher type of energy than him that dealt that 
blow, I know not where in the pages of history to 
look. I need not pronounce his name, for you 
have looked upon his fleeting form from this spot, 
when like a swift cloud borne on the Western 
breeze, he was gathering his lightning to burst into 
storm an hundred miles away. Your eyes have 
followed him to behold victory after victory, — aye 
and victory that seemed of startling impossibility, 
— light on his banners, until, amid the crowning 
effort of his genius. Heaven released him from his 
tireless labours and permitted him in vision beati- 
fic, ere death had set the final seal upon his brow, 
" to cross over the river and rest under the shade 
of the trees." * 

An impartial and attentive observer cannot fail 
to discover evidence, in what has been accomplished 
in Virginia during the last four years, and accom- 
plished too, under the pressure of impoverishment 
and political adversity, that the impulse given to 
the energy of her sons by war, has not ceased to 
act with the return of peace. That energy turned 
into peaceful channels with a promptness and has 
maintained itself with a steadiness alike worthy of 
remark. 

*See the authentic and deeply interesting account of the last moments of 
Gen. Stonewall Jackson by his chaplain, the Rev. B. L. Dabney. 

2 



26 

In the valley of Virginia, which four years ago 
presented a scene of devastation imperfectly por- 
trayed already, you will now find, in rebuilt fences, 
barns, bridges, highways, mills and homesteads, 
and in fields dotted with the stacks of abundant 
harvest, or still waving joyfully with tassled maize, 
the mingled evidence of nature's bounty and of 
man's industry. From the mountains to the sea, 
many a goodly prospect, like the one around us, 
bears the marks of the same returning prosperity. 

Consider the present condition of the railways 
which so lately seemed, with their destroyed 
bridges, stations, beds, equipment, to be involved 
in irreparable ruin. All of them are so recon- 
structed, re-equipped, and administered as to com- 
pare favorably with the highways of prosperous 
communities. Of the two that pass by the place 
where we now stand, one has reached out an arm 
to grasp the riches of the valley, and is pushing 
its main stem to further conquest; while the other, 
already burthened with heavier freights than it has 
ever carried, is piercing the mountains with resist- 
less progress, and will soon bring by your doors 
the trade and travel of the west. The passenger 
on your eastern border may now, as never before, 
glide with uninterrupted comfort, through your 
principal cities, from the banks of the Potomac to 
the heart of Carolina. 

A railway in excellent condition, extends from 
your capital through the richest tobacco country of 



27 

America, lays under contribution the fertile valley 
of the Yadkin, and brings to your ports the cotton 
of Georgia and Alabama, while still another has 
just reached for the first time the head of that 
magnificent river now destined no longer to roll a 
deserted tide past the historic town that saw the 
consummation of Independence. And as a conclu- 
ding evidence of what has been done in this depart- 
ment of industry, I point you to the four hundred 
miles of re-established road extending from your 
ancient seaport, — the witness of a more active com- 
merce than it has ever before looked on, — to the 
mountains of Tennessee. In the re-organization 
of this great road, bringing to an Atlantic port the 
mineral and agricultural wealth of your south 
western counties, stretching by its connections to 
the Mississippi, and aiming for and destined to 
reach the distant treasures of the Golden Gate, 
you may see what has been achieved by a young 
Virginian, who has carried into the pursuits of 
peace the same skilful energy that marked his ca- 
reer in war.* 

Your shattered towns have repaired their ruin, 
and your capital has risen from its ashes in new 
beauty and solidity of structure. 

If we turn from material interests to the higher 
interests of education, do we find that nothing has 
been accomplished in Virginia? Has this, our 
University, shown herself unworthy, by her recent 

*Gen. William Mahone. 



28 

efforts, of the great conception, the arduous and 
protracted and anxious labours of her founder and 
of his associates? Is there no evidence to be found 
here of devotion to human advancement, in the 
fact that within four years after the close of a 
calamitous war, new professorships have been es- 
tablished to meet the need of instruction in those 
applications of science which the requirements of 
the age and the wasted resources of the State in an 
especial manner call for ? Is the laboratory just 
completed here, — a laboratory which, in size, ar- 
rangement, convenience, and completeness of appa- 
ratus for scientific investigation, may fitly compare 
with the laboratories of the most famous universi- 
ties, — worthy of no commendation? Have the 
corps of instructors here shown themselves unfit 
successors of those men who forty-four years ago 
brought their labour and renown from Europe to 
the service of the infant seminary? Have no recent 
contributions to sound learning proceeded hence ? 
no words to show that the language of true science 
is the pure expression of common sense, and that a 
teacher may admirably fulfil his duties here and at 
the same time instruct and delight a wider public?* 
Have the four hundred and fifty young men, so 
soon brought within the embrace of the University, 

*For a sufficient, though not a complete, answer to these questions, it is 
only necessary to refer to Prof. Scheie de Vere's "Studies in English," and 
to Prof. Mallet's "Lecture on Chemistry applied to the arts" delivered be- 
fore the University of Virginia May 30, 1868. 



29 

at each of her late annual sessions shown themselves 
unmindful of the care of which they have been 
the object? Was there no motive for generous 
applause when we saw not a few of them three 
years ago, the smoke of battle scarce departed from 
their garments, with empty sleeves hanging from 
their breasts, in the act of receiving the testimo- 
nials of their successful eifort to profit with the 
return of peace, by the opportunities of knowledge 
which they had lost in war? Can the testimo- 
nials themselves be said to be of but little value 
when we have seen young men who have earned 
them, bear off the highest honors in general com- 
petitive examinations before the most distinguished 
boards of medical science the whole country can 
produce? 

I have dwelt with emphasis on the illustration 
afforded by this University that the people of Vir- 
ginia, as fitly represented here, are not unmindful 
of the high interests of education, because, gentle- 
men, this is OUR University. But there are within 
the State other seats of learning whose extended 
and extending usefulness afford ample evidence of 
successful effort in the same direction. The exer- 
tion, the progress, we witness here, have been made 
at William and Mary, Hampden Sidney, Randolph 
Macon, The Military Institute, and Washington 
College where, with modest dignity, an illustrious 
soldier devotes his great and experienced faculties 
to the noblest employment that can engage them. 



30 

Time woud fail me to bring before you the evi- 
dence that might be easily accumulated to show 
that in the interests of primary education, both for 
whites and blacks, the native white population of 
this State have not been backward in putting forth 
the energy they have exhibited in the pursuit of 
other objects. A noble zeal has also marked their 
care for the highest of all concerns — a religion that, 
without inclining to dogmatism or symbolism, fer- 
vently cherishes the cardinal doctrines of the Chris- 
tian faith. 

Surely there is ground for the belief that a peo- 
ple from among whom have sprung such men, — a 
people whose ancient and whose recent record dis- 
plays so much of high achievement in war and 
peace, possesses a permanency of type that will 
withstand a contact with any immigrant population 
though it be 

"A multitude like which the populous north 
Pour'd never from her frozen loins, to pass 
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous sons 
Came like a deluge on the south.'' 

It is true that the people of Virginia must en- 
counter new dangers and prepare for new duties in 
the altered circumstances which surround them. 
They are about to be brought into intimacy of 
communion with the great world of modern pro- 
gress and civilization from which they have been 
kept by the misfortune of slavery, in comparative 
isolation. The startling phenomena of this age of 



31 

steam and electricity, of this age of triumph by the 
genius of man over the forces of nature, are about 
to be held up as never before to their near and 
wondering view. They are now to be called on to 
exert all their faculties in diversified fields of em- 
ployment from which they have hitherto been 
largely excluded. If they would succeed in these 
new fields of effort, they must indulge no narrow 
prejudice — no prejudice that marks a stationary or 
a retrogressive people. They must not ask who or 
whence is the author of this new lesson, but they 
must weigh the lesson taught according to its mer- 
its. They must be prompt and earnest in engraft- 
ing into their habits the excellencies of method, of 
punctuality, of accuracy, of steadiness, of dispatch, 
which Washington and other eminent Virginians 
have carried to perfection, but which agricultural 
communities have not usually attained. If the 
cultivation of these virtues enable them to achieve 
success in the pursuit of material prosperity in the 
midst of an active and crowded competition, they 
must still continue on their guard against dangers 
from which an easy freedom was once their portion. 
They must remember that all barbarisms are not 
extinct with the "barbarism of slavery" which so 
long monopolized rhetorical invective. They must 
remember that barbarisms still lurk in the lap of a 
boasted civilization, in the midst of an age of un- 
paralleled material progress. They must beware 
of the barbarism of a perverse and demoralizing 



32 

literature. They must beware of the barbarism 
that would rob woman of her charms by thrusting 
her loveliness into the arena of political strife. 
They must beware of the barbarism that would 
summon the disembodied spirit from its myste- 
rious abode at the call of a profane rap. They 
must shun as they would a pestilence that most 
deadly of all barbarisms that has proclaimed the 
gibbet of a fanatic to be as glorious as the cross, 
and that seeks to exalt the religion of Socrates 
above the religion of Jesus. 

They should cling, as to an ark of safety, to their 
love of country life, to their courtesy, their manli- 
ness, their generosity, their hospitality.* 

In his intercourse with an unfamiliar world, the 
Virginian should profit, as Bacon advises the 
traveller to profit by what he sees and hears in 

*If the exercise of hospitality is not as indiscriminating in Virginia now 
as it was at the beginning of the 18th century, its spirit continues to be 
not less characteristic of the people. 

"The inhabitants," writes Beverley in the early years of the 18th cen- 
tury, "are very courteous to strangers, who need no other recommendation 
but the being human creatures. A stranger has no more to do, but to enquire 
upon the road, where any gentleman or good housekeeper lives, and there he 
may depend upon being received with hospitality. This good nature is so 
general among their people, that the gentry, when they go abroad, order 
their principal servant to entertain all visitors, with everything the planta- 
tion affords. And the poor planters, who have but one bed, will very 
often sit up or lie upon a form or couch all night, to make room for a weary 
traveller to repose himself after his journey. 

"If there happens to be a churl, that either out of covetousness or ill na- 
ture will not comply with this generous custom, he has a mark of infamy 
set upon him, and is abhorred by all." 



33 

distant lands, so as "to let it appear that he doth 
not change his country manners for those of for- 
eign parts, but only prick in some flowers of that 
he hath learned abroad into the customs of his 
own country." 

If the people of Virginia prove true, — as we have 
every reason to believe they will prove true, — to 
their remote history, to their recent history, and 
to themselves, while extending the right hand of 
welcome to every deserving immigrant from what- 
ever region of the earth he may come, they will 
so impress upon the plastic mass of immigration 
the best of till the ancient characteristics of Vir- 
ginia, that all marks of difference between the old 
inhabitant and the new settler will quickly disap- 
pear, and a race homogeneous in sentiment, if not 
in origin, shall continue to occupy the soil. 

By all alike, whatever is inspiring and ennobling 
and glorious in the history and traditions of Vir- 
ginia shall continue to be cherished. All shall 
draw the spirit of devotion to philosophy and to 
liberty from the founder of this University. All, 
without distinction, shall seek to learn eloquence 
from the lips of Henry, the principles of constitu- 
tional o-overnment from Madison, the interpreta- 
tion and exposition of law from Marshall, and se- 
rene wisdom and grandeur of soul from Washing- 
ton. And when the political perplexities of the 
hour shall vanish, this ancient commonwealth shall 
resume her appropriate place among her sister 



k 



34 

states, strong in a renewed and advancing material 
prosperity, stronger still in the intelligence, the 
energy and the virtue of her sons and daughters, 
and yet radiant with that high renown that right- 
fully belongs to her as the mother of children 
whose foremost places are secure among the states- 
men, heroes, and founders of the Republic. 



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